1. [Field of the Invention]
This invention relates to a terminal printer utilizing an electrophotographic process, and more particularly to a printer having a mechanism for handling printed sheets.
Terminal printers utilizing the electrophotographic process can produce printed materials with such a high printing quality that they are in some cases used in publishing materials in small number of copies or shared by a plurality of personal computers.
In printing a small number of copies, functions such as double-side printing and sorting of printed sheets by page are in demand.
To share the printer with a plurality of users, it is required that printed copies be sorted and compiled by user.
For this reason, a sorter of such structure as to be used in copying machines is sometimes mounted at the recording sheet discharge outlet of the printer. More specifically, a sorter guide member connectable to the recording sheet discharge outlet of the printer is provided; a second sorter guide member that rises upright is connected to an end portion of this sorter guide member; and a plurality of horizontal windows are provided at a predetermined interval on the second sorter guide member, and these windows accommodate gate members each being operated by a drive member.
In such a sorter, in which a gate member is arranged per tray and the tray must be selected by the gate member, thereby requiring a drive mechanism per gate member. Thus, the printer structure becomes large.
Also, in order to respond to a demand for facedown discharging in which printed sheets are discharged as paginated and for faceup discharging by which the printed face can be checked, a path for causing a recording sheet to make a U-turn on the upper surface of a housing at the recording sheet discharge outlet is provided thereby to allow the path to be selected according to the discharge mode. However, this requires that printed materials be placed wide apart, one in the upper part and the other in the lower part, thereby causing confusion in handling recording sheets.